Romance and Reality
The Victorian era and the early 20th century idealised the Elizabethan era. The Encyclopædia Britannica maintains that "The long reign of Elizabeth I, 1558-1603, was England's Golden Age...'Merry England,' in love with life, expressed itself in music and literature, in architecture, and in adventurous seafaring." This idealising tendency was shared by Britain and an Anglophilic America. In popular culture, the image of those adventurous Elizabethan seafarers was embodied in the films of Errol Flynn.
In response and reaction to this hyperbole, modern historians and biographers have tended to take a more dispassionate view of the Tudor period.
Read more about this topic: Elizabethan Era
Famous quotes containing the words romance and, romance and/or reality:
“The romance and mystery is [sic] gone. Computer-processed images have no delicacy, no craftsmanship, no substance, and no soul. No love.”
—Kim Nibblett (b. c. 1969)
“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older—the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“It is in the nature of allegory, as opposed to symbolism, to beg the question of absolute reality. The allegorist avails himself of a formal correspondence between “ideas” and “things,” both of which he assumes as given; he need not inquire whether either sphere is “real” or whether, in the final analysis, reality consists in their interaction.”
—Charles, Jr. Feidelson, U.S. educator, critic. Symbolism and American Literature, ch. 1, University of Chicago Press (1953)